Susan Sarandon, the well known Hollywood star, is reported to have said that (the American) people were more awake because of Trump. This reminded me of a story about Mullah Nasruddin, the wise-fool of Sufi lore. I heard it from Kamran Zafar, our esteemed colleague on this site, who deserves the title of “Practical Sufi” with which he is affectionately known to us Sufi seekers. The gusto and verve with which he related this teaching tale is hard to reproduce in the written word, but I will try, at least, to convey its essence.

At one time in his life, Nasruddin got into the business of quick enlightenment. To those seeking enlightenment (of which there are many in each age and all times) he announced an easy and cheap way to gain insight into existence and reality. All they had to do was to join him in a morning assembly and to follow him in procession as he walked around town while imparting to them the spirituality they sought. Nothing could have been simpler! The seekers of quick and easy enlightenment grew by leaps and bounds. The Mullah would be at the head of the throng, incanting holy chants, intoning unintelligible phrases, and seeming always profound and powerfully mysterious. The procession would march from one end of the town to the other, at which time the Mullah would stress continued effort, offer prayers, and allow the crowd to disperse.

At first the crowd grew rapidly, then levelled, and then (as many grew tired of the humdrum routine) started to tail off. The Mullah who gloated over his success when the crowds were growing seemed even more ecstatic when they were dwindling. He claimed success of his method even as people were leaving him. Everyone was puzzled over Mullah’s happiness over thinning crowds. Some wondered if he was losing his grip on reality. Finally, someone asked him how he could claim success if people were leaving him. He laughed and then cried, at their simple-minded confusion, wondering why they could not see what was so plain to see: the successful ones were the seeming “losers,” the ones who left the throng of Mullah’s mindless followers.

One wonders if a similar moment of enlightenment and spiritual growth awaits some people who are blindly, i.e., in the grip of false consciousness, following Mr Trump and his promises, explicit and implicit.

In order to see, act…In order to stay the same, change
(Heinz von Foerster)

You can’t face yourself or turn away from yourself because you are ITWhat do you need to understand? Can the eye see itself?
(Zen saying )

In order to see, we need to face it (whatever the it may happen to be) and to get through, we must act. So what do we do? Mullah Nasruddin, the sage of Sufi lore, is likely to answer: Look in the mirror! You can face yourself and the eye can see itself, in it. The mirror is other people.

Miyamoto Musashi, Japan’s foremost swordsman, philosopher/painter, says, “If you don’t know others, you don’t know yourself.” He advises, in a utilitarian vein, “Do not do things which are useless.” This would disappoint Nasruddin, as he is wont to counsel things that seem useless or worse (his strategy seems to be to lead people to go beyond thinking and yet think again, perhaps, in a new way: to unlearn and begin to learn . However, the Mullah would certainly concur with the samurai that “..there is more than one path to the top of the mountain.” (The Book of Five Rings, 1645 ). Musashi also states, “If you know the Way broadly, you will see it in everything.” In other words, the way of the sword became the way of painting, art, of living and dying. And then giving it up (in his case, the sword) became possible for him; clinging to it was no longer necessary. The way of the sword became the way of no sword. I think Bruce Lee was referring to this situation when he talked about his way as the way of no way.

Knowing and realizing ,or, becoming, oneself is possible only via the other, according to Musashi.

A Sufi saying seems relevant here: ” The meaning of life is to plant a tree, under whose shade we do not expect to sit.” ( Nelson Henderson ). The other deserves that place of solace and peace. In Nasruddin’s story of the lost keys, he needed an other to complete the narrative and achieve/convey insight into man’s blind spots, into the yin and yang , light and dark, the dialectic of being , of knowing and unknowing, of life and death.

Rumi expresses our need for the other poetically:

Be grateful for whoever comes

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond

The other here refers to the other or alien outside and inside ourselves ( i.e., unwanted feelings, thoughts etc. ) .

We need the other to know ourselves; however, like anything else, if this is carried beyond reason,a surrender to the other results, rather than self knowledge. Just as the other can be dehumanized, so can the self. A current example:

Trump, what he symbolizes, seems to be the other, for the United States in general but for the Republican Party, in particular, the shadow, the dark side, long disavowed, disowned, as if not existing. The Republicans , in facing the shadow, could learn a great deal about themselves, their values, their moral compass, their strength of character. Instead, mostly what seems to be happening is: surrender, no increase in self knowledge, in the face of a strong personality. He also represents a kind of stress test for the US system of government, for the part represented by Lincoln. Trump will pass but this dark aspect of society will remain, posing a challenge from time to time; and an opportunity for betterment, if faced sans denial, illusions ,delusions,paranoia.

Consider this Nasruddin scenario: Mullah Nasruddin has become a celebrity, much sought after. This forces him to resort to disguises to evade “fans” and their questions. A beard, if long enough, would serve purpose. One morning the Mullah finds himself in the company of a youngster who, after scrutinizing the Mullah’s face, asks hesitantly, “Sir, I was wondering whether your beard stays over the blanket or under it when you go to bed at night.”

For the first time in his life, the sage is stumped. He scratches his head in puzzlement, “Son, I honestly don’t know, I haven’t paid attention, but I appreciate your asking it. It deserves some observation and thought.”

After some time,when the Mullah runs into the youngster again, his beard is gone; the latter obviously disappointed, has an inquiring, baffled look. The Mullah smiles indulgently, ” My boy, yours was some question; I didn’t know if it was right to leave the beard above the blanket or pull it below the blanket at night. I just couldn’t sleep anymore. My beard had to go.”

In this story the Mullah seems to have been steeped in Taoist thinking: treating a trifling matter with the utmost seriousness whereas previously he had been seen to treat utterly weighty questions with lightness.

The beard became a quandary; he addressed it by eliminating the source . Why bother thinking? Why have a choice? It is like the wall on the Mexican border; it eliminates the problem. Except that it doesn’t really. However, in the short term, it relieves us of having to think and make choices, ethical, moral, and political. The same goes for the climate change or the global warming issue. Why not just avoid having to think and to make choices? (Incidentally, those of us who oppose the wall, are also often motivated by the wish to avoid the exertion that thinking & making choices require. It is not just a matter of saying no).

For some problems, the Mullah’s “solution” may seem like a lazy avoidance of thinking and making choices. However, for other situations, the suggestion may work perfectly well, such as in public health. If tobacco and alcohol consumption is thought to cause certain diseases, then trying to eliminate these habits makes sense. By analogy, if D’aesh is deemed to be the cause of terrorist activity, “completely wiping it out” makes sense.

However, we will still have to make choices, because D’aesh (or ISIS), apart from being a problem, is also a symptom of other things. Terrorism, like the Mullah’s beard, is likely to grow back. Questions must continue to be raised. The Mullah’s motto was: make light of the serious, problematize the day-to-day, the familiar. Stay on the surface to plumb the depths.

This is an ode to Love. Love is the theme of Existence and Creation in the Sufi thought.

The poetry is in a strict metre and rhyme that characterizes what is known as “ghazal” in Urdu and Farsi. The original text is in Urdu. Transliteration in English and Hindi is provided. The English translation is in the iambic pentameter, but without rhyme.

Zen, which is mostly practice and not theory, requires three things: Great Faith, Great Doubt, and Great Perseverance.

Following the recent election of Donald Trump, to many practitioners of Zen, and the Sufis, and the humanists, and the universalists, it may seem that they are in the midst of Great Doubt: global discouragement, loss of faith, and loss of goodwill. Here, in Trumpland, the erstwhile great United States that is now the Great-Again America, the shameful episode of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II is seemingly being viewed as a precedent, rather than a stain. (Perhaps slavery will be seen as another precedent.)

At the spectacle of defeat of love at the hands of hate, it seems foolish to look beyond the immediate present. Some friends of mine have told me that they are in shock and mourning after the elections. Indeed, it is hard to see any light in this dark. But wait; what would you expect Nasruddin the foolish Sufi sage (or the sagacious Sufi fool) to say? To many, a dark night may be the time to give up search and hope, but Nasruddin would say that a dark night is the time to begin a quest (as he shows in some of his fables).

Then there is the matter of perseverance. While energies circulate between Great Doubt and Great Faith, Great Perseverance is what sustains the search and takes it forward.

Despite talk of Muslims being required to be register and being subject to special surveillance, questioning, and restrictions, many people may not know that there exists a group called Muslims for Trump, as there are African Americans and Latinos for Trump. Obviously, these people saw something good (or something good for themselves) in this spewer of poisonous rhetoric. In doing so, they may have exhibited Great Faith, but self-interest may have blinded them to the Great Doubt that should accompany Great Faith. Or, perhaps, they wished to avoid the pain and suffering that goes with Great Doubt, especially in the presence of Great Perseverance.

Derrida the deconstructionist the Arab Jew (there is such a thing) wrote somewhere that justice is never achieved but must always be fought for. Similarly, love never trumps hate. The best that can be hoped for is a standoff, a workable impasse. If and when love triumphs, the people who believe themselves to represent love must not mistreat the people they believe to represent hate. As is true for Trump-admirers in Muslim minority lands, Muslims in Muslim majority lands should muster sufficient Great Doubt so as not to throw hateful rhetoric and cruelty towards their minorities. And in this determination we, the humans, should persevere.

The subatomic particles that make up everything in the cosmos, or the laws of Physics, Gravity, Thermodynamics and so on, are considered to be the basic building blocks of the universe.

However, some physicists now claim there is something even more basic; Information itself. They believe the universe works like a cosmic computer, a giant quantum computer of unimaginable complexity, constantly crunching tiny bits of information.

According to Dr Paul Davies, a cosmologist at Arizona State University, information is much more like a fundamental concept. It really has to do with whether a physical system can exist in more than one state. This is just like tossing a coin, heads and tails, and taking a look at it, and you find, for example, heads, then you gain a bit of information.

When you select from a range of possibilities and find there is one actual outcome, then you gain information.

And ultimately all science, all of our experience of the world, all of our observations come from interrogating Nature, and gaining bits of information.

Now, what is life? It is individual, and its highest form, so far, is the Person in which the individual becomes a self-contained exclusive center of experience.

We appreciate our center of experience in our Personality itself, in our acts of perceiving, judging and willing and in this process we are constantly interacting with information.

In other words, human life is a kind of tension caused by the information invading the Person, and the Person invading the information, gladiator-like, in an arena of mutual invasion. Our personality is present in this arena as a directive energy and is formed and disciplined by its own experience.

Physically as well as spiritually human being is a self-contained center, but not yet a complete individual. The ideal of humanity is not self-negation but self-affirmation and they attain to this ideal by absorbing more and more information. The less information we possess, the less our individuality and uniqueness. One who attains the most information is the completest person.

This view of humanity is opposed to that of all forms of Pantheistic Sufism which regard absorption in a universal life or soul as the final aim of our salvation.

Perhaps the true person is not finally absorbed in the universe. On the contrary, they continuously absorb bits of information into themselves and become more unique and individual by mastering the world of matter.

Life is a spiritual principle and the greatest obstacle in the way of life is matter. But matter is not evil, since it enables the inner powers of life to unfold themselves. Life removes all obstructions in its march by collecting and absorbing information.

Thus, human life attains freedom by the removal of all obstructions in its way. It is partly free, partly determined, and reaches fuller freedom by absorbing more and more information.

Life is a forward assimilative movement and in humans the center of life becomes a Person. Personality is strengthened by Love. Although the word ‘Love’ is used in a very wide sense, it means the desire to assimilate, to absorb. Its highest form is the creation of values and ideals and the effort to achieve them. The whole gamut of art, religion, philosophy and ethics is based on the human desire to create values and ideals.

Personality is a state of tension and can continue only if the state of tension is maintained, otherwise relaxation will ensue and damage the structure of human personality. For the state of tension to continue requires a continuous creation of values and ideals. We must criticize our values, perhaps change them and, if necessary, create new worths; since the immortality of a people, as Nietzsche put it, depends upon incessant creation of new worth.

Throughout the history of humanity it seems that the process of creation of ideals and values in every culture has taken some form of Naturalism peculiar to its own worldview, and in some sort of ‘ism’. Thus, the modern humanity fondly hopes to unravel fresh sources of energy that results in the creation of new loyalties such as nationalism, patriotism, atheism and communism.

These we might call the ‘new religions of earthly salvation.’ Unable to continue believing in God, the Moderns invented substitute religions, godless spiritualities professing a radical atheism and clinging to the notion of giving meaning to human existence and, in some cases, justifying why we should die for them.

No wonder then that Nietzsche described patriotism and nationalism as ‘sickness and unreason’ and ‘the strongest force against culture.’

Since Personality is the most valuable achievement of humans, it becomes extremely important for us to see to it that it does not regress. Thus, our Personality gives us a standard of value; that which strengthens Personality is good, that which weakens it is bad. All values and ideals must be judged from the point of view of Personality.

It is in view of the fortification of his or her Personality that a Muslim sees Islam as an enterprise to harness this ultimate principle of value and thereby reintegrate the forces of one’s own Personality.

However, no doubt we live in an era of Islamophobia. Islam is under attack from the forces of Criticism and Scientific Specialism. Indeed, all faiths are under such attack. Muslims are in a strange predicament. Islamophobia is robbing us of faith in our own future.

Says Dr Sir Muhammad Iqbal (Indian poet-philosopher, 1877-1938):

‘…….It is the future which must always control the present; to the species taken as a whole, its unborn members are perhaps more real than its existing members whose immediate interests are subordinated and even sacrificed to the future interests of that unborn infinity which slowly discloses itself from generation to generation.’ (The Muslim Community-A Sociological Study. Lecture delivered at the MAO College, Aligarh, India in 1910).

Now, it is from this standpoint – from the standpoint of the future that we need to test the worth of our Muslim personality and identity.

The basic difference between the Muslim identity and other identities is in our unique conception of nationality. It is not the unity of language or country or any specific economic interest that forms the basic principle of our nationality. We all believe in a certain view of the universe and we participate in the same historical tradition. It is because of those factors that we are members of the society founded by the Prophet of Islam.

Our nationality is based on a purely abstract idea. Its life-principle is not dependent upon any particular people or country. In other words, with us nationality is purely an idea; it has no objective basis which means that our only rallying-point as a people is a kind of purely subjective agreement in a certain view of the world.

This point of universal agreement on which our Muslim identity depends has basically a national rather than intellectual significance for us.

Islam has a much deeper significance for us than merely religious; it has a peculiarly national meaning for us.

Our communal life is unthinkable without a firm grasp of the Islamic Principle. The idea of Islam is, so to speak, our eternal home or country where we live, move and have our being. To us it is above everything else, as England is above all to the Englishman and Deutschland uber alles to the German.

The moment our grasp of the Islamic Principle is loosened that our identity is gone and we become an abstract, disembodied universality like a chemical or mathematical formula, a nameless nothing.